White iPhone To Launch Later In 2010 Says Apple

Apple issued their shortest statement ever, saying that the white iPhone would be available later this year without saying exactly when but did say that the phones proved to be more challenging to manufacture than they had originally expected.

The company did not provide with more details regarding the extent of the difficulties it had met but as recently as last Friday, Steve Jobs said that the white iPhone would be available by the second half of July, which ends next week.

Ars Technica reckons that the colorant used in the material to produce the white finish might be the root cause of the problem, "possibly when dealing with with the ion-exchange hardening process used in making Gorilla Glass", the site added.

Popular tech site Engadget put forward the possibility that Apple's glass supplier (which might turn out to be a Chinese company rather than Corning), is facing some serious challenges trying to find out an elusive combination of paint thickness and opacity.

We've already seen people converting their existing black iPhone 4 into a white one by swapping the external enclosure (which means getting rid of the screen as well). The only problems they met being the speaker grill and the home button.